Sony announced today a new updated internal Blu-ray burner for PC. The new drive doubles the write speed as compared to previous Blu-ray BD-R burners inside computer systems. The new BWU-200S Blu-ray burner cuts burn time in half allowing a full 50Gb BD-R disc to be burned in about 45 minutes. Previous drives were 2x drives and the burn time was around 90 minutes for a BD-R disc.

In addition to burning BD-R discs, the drive can also burn DVD+/-R discs at 16x, DVD DL burning is supported as well. Software is included with the burner that allows for the capture, authoring, editing, burning and viewing of high-definition content captured in HDV 1080i format from HDV camcorders.

With the BWU-200S a BD-R or BD-RW disc can store up to 230 minutes of HD video. Sony uses a SATA interface rather than the PATA interface more common to optical drives. The form factor is the standard 5.25-inch internal size and the drive and its software are compatible with Windows XP and Vista.

“Advanced optical storage technologies, such as Blu-ray Disc technology with its vast capacity compared to DVD technology, will be key enablers for next generation PC applications like HD personal video content and high-definition TV recording,” said Wolfgang Schlichting, research director for removable storage at IDC. “Sony's many innovations in optical storage have prepared the company to be a leader in the Blu-ray Disc writable market.”

Online distro?? I hope you don't live in the USA. If so, and you don't live in one of the most populated 20 cities, you are DREAMING that you'll ever have the capacity to move around 30-40GB movies at a time. Fiber internet? 10 years with our telecom monopoly and their minions of lobbyists sucking off congress.Unless a *MAJOR* revolution happens, solid state memory, whether flash or something else, will not take the place of optical media for a long time.

I'll be signing up in the next few weeks for the 15Mbit service too (30 has too big of a price jump, two 15's would be cheaper -- strange pricing). They just dug up our street (well, in spots) this last summer.